Thread: Folkloric Evenings Board: Oblivion / Ship of Fools.


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Posted by Firenze (# 619) on :
 
We're just back from a conference held in a minor college of a Famous University. Conference Dinner was in a Famous College of Famous University. Didn't go because tickets were £60 a head (that's a lot of pizza). Those who did admitted the food was indifferent and the service slow but they had got to sit in Great Hall of Famous College and choristers of Famous Choir of Famous College had processed in and sung a bit. It had been an Experience.

How was this different, I thought, to nights at the taverna and the colourful folkloric dancing? These are not real peasants, those choristers are not engaged in singing divine service in chapel: these are contextless recreations, got up for the tourists.

Have you had a fake experience of a fake thing, or a real experience of a fake thing, or a real experience of a real thing? Does it matter?

[ 11. July 2015, 17:08: Message edited by: Firenze ]
 
Posted by Piglet (# 11803) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Firenze:
... those choristers are not engaged in singing divine service in chapel ...

Not while they were singing for the entertainment of the conference guests, but during the week in term time the choristers at Famous Chapel are engaged in singing Divine Office pretty much every day.

If we're in Famous University Town when the choirs are singing, we'll attend the service and although the "performance" will be a lot more polished than our own choral offerings, I don't see them as being any less "real".

Having said that, if we get the chance to go to services in both Very Famous Chapel and Slightly Less Famous But Actually Just As Good Chapel (if you sprint, you can attend Evensong at both on the same day), we often find that at the first (where the chapel is packed) you feel that you've been to a performance, while at the second (where the chapel is almost empty) you've been to a service.
 
Posted by Stetson (# 9597) on :
 
Many people(myself included) would probably think that buildings like the UK House Of Commons are built in an impressively antiquated style of architecture, that connects the visitor or viewer to some sort of glorious past.

But, actually, while such buidlings are indeed archaic by 2015 standards, they are actually Gothic Revival, and hence, at the time of their construction, were about as antiquarian as would be a po-mo building that quotes something from the Renaissance, erected today.

Of course, with Westminster, you could argue that looking back into the Victorian Era is still a pretty neat thing, even if the building isn't as charmingly time-worn as the style would have you believe. But you can't really say the same thing about, for example, this hotel in my hometown, which is barely a century old.

[ 11. July 2015, 18:44: Message edited by: Stetson ]
 
Posted by Brenda Clough (# 18061) on :
 
The real estate listings in the US are stiff with houses that, though built within the last three months, energetically ape the appearance of houses erected when Madison was president. It is entirely an exterior. Inside are modern bathrooms, wifi, and HVAC.
My daughter, when she was in the US Army, had the best of all possible worlds. She was stationed in central Germany, and took up residence in a town founded by the Romans back when there were only three digits in the calendar year. She lived in the medieval heart of the city and looked out onto half-timbered buildings a thousand years old. Nevertheless her apartment had wifi.
 
Posted by Stetson (# 9597) on :
 
This article is about an annual festival in Calgary Canada that(at least according to the article) fits the theme of this thread.

TL/DR: The premier of the province caused a minor stir by wearing her cowboy hat backwards at a rodeo festival, but the writer argues that the festival is just a fake cowboy event, and has been so since its founding in 1912.
 
Posted by Firenze (# 619) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Piglet:
quote:
Originally posted by Firenze:
... those choristers are not engaged in singing divine service in chapel ...

Not while they were singing for the entertainment of the conference guests, but during the week in term time the choristers at Famous Chapel are engaged in singing Divine Office pretty much every day
And if I had come upon them performing the function for which they were intended, I would feel I'd had a valid experience - precisely because it had nothing to do with me, they would have been doing it anyway. But if I had been at the Dinner, I would have been aware that this was only happening because I (as fee-paying grockle) was there.
 
Posted by Piglet (# 11803) on :
 
Ah - I see what you mean. I think I may have got hold of the wrong end of the stick. [Hot and Hormonal]

Originally posted by Brenda Clough:
quote:
... looked out onto half-timbered buildings a thousand years old. Nevertheless her apartment had wifi ...

If you buy a half-timbered house that was built when Henry VIII was divorcing one wife and singing madrigals to the next, you're only really bothered about the authentic look of the outside. You're going to fit the inside with a 21st century kitchen and plumbing, assuming of course that you don't fancy cooking everything on a spit and emptying your chamber-pot from the upstairs window ... [Eek!]
 
Posted by John Holding (# 158) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Firenze:
quote:
Originally posted by Piglet:
quote:
Originally posted by Firenze:
... those choristers are not engaged in singing divine service in chapel ...

Not while they were singing for the entertainment of the conference guests, but during the week in term time the choristers at Famous Chapel are engaged in singing Divine Office pretty much every day
And if I had come upon them performing the function for which they were intended, I would feel I'd had a valid experience - precisely because it had nothing to do with me, they would have been doing it anyway. But if I had been at the Dinner, I would have been aware that this was only happening because I (as fee-paying grockle) was there.
If you're talking about the famous Hall, COllege, University and Choir I think you are, in fact the said choir does from time to time (admittedly not frequently) sing in the said hall for the local inhabitants.

John
 
Posted by Firenze (# 619) on :
 
Leaving aside the choir for the moment - another instance: Highland hotel dining room, coach load of Dutch tourists in. A skirl of bagpipes and a haggis is carried in procession, MC pops it with a skean dhu and we get the first stanza of 'Fair fa' your honest, sonsie face, Great chieftain o the puddin'-race!' Much clicking of cameras.

But taking pictures of what? Not a Burns Supper, whatever it may have said in the brochure.
 
Posted by Dafyd (# 5549) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Stetson:
Many people(myself included) would probably think that buildings like the UK House Of Commons are built in an impressively antiquated style of architecture, that connects the visitor or viewer to some sort of glorious past.

But, actually, while such buidlings are indeed archaic by 2015 standards, they are actually Gothic Revival, and hence, at the time of their construction, were about as antiquarian as would be a po-mo building that quotes something from the Renaissance, erected today.

It's a rather different spirit from po-mo. That is, while Charles Barry certainly wanted people to recognise that he was copying the past he did so because he thought that the bit of the past he was copying was aesthetically superior. In the same way, Christopher Wren's St Paul's is imitating a Roman temple, or imitating a Palladian church imitating a Roman temple, because that's what Wren's generation thought aesthetic excellence consisted in.

Whereas po-mo architecture doesn't think any era of the past is aesthetically excellent - it does so because it thinks referencing the past is intellectually and visually interesting when recognised as such rather than because it's beautiful or has any intrinsic merit.
 
Posted by Penny S (# 14768) on :
 
I had a bit of a cringe at the Sami house we visited on my eclipse trip. Dressing up for the grockles and emmets, yoicking briefly without explanation of meaning. I took piccies of the property, but only of the host when his son turned up, having thrown the braided top on over his t-shirt and jeans, with his trainers instead of boots, because it wasn't exactly performance.

Incidentally, the traditional meal we were offered included potatoes, carrots, tomatoes and sweetcorn, not what I would have expected to have survived in the ice age refugia up there!

[ 12. July 2015, 14:24: Message edited by: Penny S ]
 
Posted by Stetson (# 9597) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Dafyd:
quote:
Originally posted by Stetson:
Many people(myself included) would probably think that buildings like the UK House Of Commons are built in an impressively antiquated style of architecture, that connects the visitor or viewer to some sort of glorious past.

But, actually, while such buidlings are indeed archaic by 2015 standards, they are actually Gothic Revival, and hence, at the time of their construction, were about as antiquarian as would be a po-mo building that quotes something from the Renaissance, erected today.

It's a rather different spirit from po-mo. That is, while Charles Barry certainly wanted people to recognise that he was copying the past he did so because he thought that the bit of the past he was copying was aesthetically superior. In the same way, Christopher Wren's St Paul's is imitating a Roman temple, or imitating a Palladian church imitating a Roman temple, because that's what Wren's generation thought aesthetic excellence consisted in.

Whereas po-mo architecture doesn't think any era of the past is aesthetically excellent - it does so because it thinks referencing the past is intellectually and visually interesting when recognised as such rather than because it's beautiful or has any intrinsic merit.

That's a very good point, about the differences between "Revival" and "po-mo". As far as this thread topic goes, though, I'd still say that the two are similar, in possibly giving future viewers a distorted idea about the specific way in which they are both antiquated styles.
 
Posted by Stetson (# 9597) on :
 
Contra what I wrote above, I suppose it's unlikely that someone 100 years from now would look at the Sainsbury Wing and conclude that it dates from a time when classical columns on buildings were a standard feature, since the ones on the building are pretty clearly being used in a way that is neither functional nor serious.

Whereas one could look at, for example, Westminister, and reach the mistaken conclusion that gothic trappings were considered state-of-the-art in the mid-19th Century, as the architect clearly takes the style seriously.

[ 12. July 2015, 16:40: Message edited by: Stetson ]
 
Posted by Firenze (# 619) on :
 
Deargod, I never realised the Sainsbury wing was quite That Bad. It's not even pastiche. It's like those developments of Executive Homes with a stupid little pedimented porch tacked on to a brick box. There is obviously a category of Folkloric architecture where you appropriate some feature of an older style, slap it on regardless and call it Vernacular.
 
Posted by Stetson (# 9597) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Firenze:
Deargod, I never realised the Sainsbury wing was quite That Bad. It's not even pastiche. It's like those developments of Executive Homes with a stupid little pedimented porch tacked on to a brick box. There is obviously a category of Folkloric architecture where you appropriate some feature of an older style, slap it on regardless and call it Vernacular.

Well, you know, the architect of that, Robert Venturi, IS the man who preached about how architects need to "learn from Las Vegas". I once saw an interview with him and his wife/collaborator, in which they reminisced about their famous trip to Vegas, and how they competed with each other to find the most decrepit or tacky buildings to say something interesting about.

That said, yeah, even by the standards of pastiche, the Sainsbury seems rather underwhelming. A somewhat more interesting usage of columns is the Canadian embassy in Washington DC. Apparently, the architect thought there was a certain amount of imperial hubris in the typical architecture of DC. Supposedly the useless, afterthought-looking columns were meant as a send-up of that.
 
Posted by M. (# 3291) on :
 
Getting back to the OP, Macarius and I once went to a son et lumiere* at the Sphinx in Cairo. That was kitschy and pretty dreadful. What made my day, though - well, both our days - was the marching band dressed as Pharoahs playing 'It's a Long Way to Tipperary' on Scottish bagpipes.

I feel it was an authentic expression of - well, something.

M.

*show involving 'sound and light'.
 
Posted by Firenze (# 619) on :
 
Nowhere, I suspect, in the rich and varied musical history of North Africa do bagpiping pharaohs feature so, yes, I think that was a genuine experience of a Thing.

Reminds me of a totally memorable St John's Eve when a Czech friend was giving us a tour of southern Bohemia. The last stop was at a party being held in a ruined chateau where the refreshments were whole roasted sheep and homemade slivovitz. In the roofless chapel an ensemble were playing Bach fugues on piano accordions. Just the best Walpurgisnacht ever.
 
Posted by jacobsen (# 14998) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Stetson:
[QUOTE]QUOTE]That said, yeah, even by the standards of pastiche, the Sainsbury seems rather underwhelming. A somewhat more interesting usage of columns is the Canadian embassy in Washington DC. Apparently, the architect thought there was a certain amount of imperial hubris in the typical architecture of DC. Supposedly the useless, afterthought-looking columns were meant as a send-up of that.

What he actually created is a neo-Palladian post-modernist food processor.
 
Posted by Curiosity killed ... (# 11770) on :
 
There's a weird North African bagpipe thing I keep encountering in the hands of buskers on the South Bank in London. The first time I was trying to work out why this guy was playing the Northumbrian pipes, because that's more or less what they sounded and looked like. I later asked one of the buskers and iirc he was Algerian.

Checking there are different forms of bagpipes across North Africa.
 
Posted by Cottontail (# 12234) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Firenze:
Leaving aside the choir for the moment - another instance: Highland hotel dining room, coach load of Dutch tourists in. A skirl of bagpipes and a haggis is carried in procession, MC pops it with a skean dhu and we get the first stanza of 'Fair fa' your honest, sonsie face, Great chieftain o the puddin'-race!' Much clicking of cameras.

But taking pictures of what? Not a Burns Supper, whatever it may have said in the brochure.

Sigh. At moments like this, I return to McDiarmid on Burns.
quote:
Mair nonsense has been uttered in his name
Than in ony's barrin liberty and Christ.

Though I did once stand before the Stiftskirche in Tuebingen, Germany, and watch with unalloyed delight as some portly middle-aged people in dirndls and lederhosen decided to depart from the traditional folk dances and do a 'modern' number to Hit the road, Jack. I think it may have been the most authentic moment in the show. [Devil]
 
Posted by Piglet (# 11803) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Firenze:
... Highland hotel dining room, coach load of Dutch tourists in. A skirl of bagpipes and a haggis is carried in procession ...

May I assume that it wasn't 25th January?
 
Posted by Firenze (# 619) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Piglet:
quote:
Originally posted by Firenze:
... Highland hotel dining room, coach load of Dutch tourists in. A skirl of bagpipes and a haggis is carried in procession ...

May I assume that it wasn't 25th January?
It was, AIR, August.

(Mind you, I was passing through downtown Tidworth one summer's evening when I glimpsed a flat window in which was a fully illuminated Christmas tree. Story there, I think.)
 
Posted by Baptist Trainfan (# 15128) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Firenze:
Deargod, I never realised the Sainsbury wing was quite That Bad. It's not even pastiche. It's like those developments of Executive Homes with a stupid little pedimented porch tacked on to a brick box.

But didn't that have something to do with the HRH monstrous carbuncle debate?

There is also Quinlan Terry's Richmond Riverside development. It's all fake and hugely derided by architects, but I can tell you that the locals preferred it to having some modern "architectural statement" placed in their midst.
 
Posted by Baptist Trainfan (# 15128) on :
 
Re. bagpipes - they were much in evidence at a folkloric festival in Brittany some years ago. I think that they are "authentic", if a revival of an older tradition (and they've never died out in other Celtic areas such as north Portugal).

But what did scandalise my (Scottish) wife was the introduction of totally spurious Breton TARTAN!
 
Posted by mark_in_manchester (# 15978) on :
 
There was a guy around here who used to attend (indoor) folk sessions in the pubs with a set of highland pipes. When he started up, everyone else went to the bar, it was so loud. But another well-attended session often included a guy in a wig and a big floral Laura Ashley dress on hammer dulcimer, and a Northumbrian smallpipes player of some renown who, last time I saw him, sported shaved head with tattooed go-faster stripes, face full of metal work, fishnets and a leather miniskirt. That was a Thing, I think.

More a thing than the real (?) boobs which got shook at me in Egypt, anyway, by the various belly dancers laid on as 'entertainment'; the deal was apparently to post fivers down the cleavage. Insufficient fivers generated outright petulance and, after a bit, another bout of shaking with renewed vigour.

My feelings remind me of those of my kids on the approach of some kind of children's entertainer in an oversize rubber head, on the street. In fact between us 'rubber head' has become shorthand for 'shit, I'm about to get mugged in a financially-motivated parody of a cultural experience - hit the warp drive'.
 
Posted by Firenze (# 619) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Baptist Trainfan:

But what did scandalise my (Scottish) wife was the introduction of totally spurious Breton TARTAN!

That wouldn't bother me as I think all tartans were 18th/19th C inventions in any case.
 
Posted by Albertus (# 13356) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Baptist Trainfan:
Re. bagpipes - they were much in evidence at a folkloric festival in Brittany some years ago. I think that they are "authentic", if a revival of an older tradition (and they've never died out in other Celtic areas such as north Portugal).

But what did scandalise my (Scottish) wife was the introduction of totally spurious Breton TARTAN!

Oh yes, there's a wholly commercial Welsh tartan too (Plaid Cymru? ha ha) which AFAICS is treated with deserved derision. But then, given the very spurious nature of things like 'clan' tartans, where does one draw a line?
 
Posted by Penny S (# 14768) on :
 
I have somewhere an article my sister came across in a Sunday supplement about a bunch of naturally mummified folk in the northern foothills of the Himalaya, or somewhere similarly unlikely, who had red hair and were clothed in woollen fabric not only in plaid designs, but also with the correct weave for such materials, if "Celtic". I am not sure of the antiquity of these people, but they were certainly older than Walter Scott's time.
 
Posted by Piglet (# 11803) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Firenze:
... It was, AIR, August.

Good God, you can't eat haggis in August - they're not in season! [Eek!]
quote:
Originally posted by Albertus:
... given the very spurious nature of things like 'clan' tartans, where does one draw a line?

I don't think there is a line - we've even got one here. [Roll Eyes]
 
Posted by Baptist Trainfan (# 15128) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Piglet:
Good God, you can't eat haggis in August - they're not in season! [Eek!]

Surely you can start shooting them (or trapping them with pepper and nets) from the Glorious Twelfth?

Of course, they'll need to hang for a bit to get the best flavour ...

[ 13. July 2015, 15:45: Message edited by: Baptist Trainfan ]
 
Posted by Firenze (# 619) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Penny S:
I have somewhere an article my sister came across in a Sunday supplement about a bunch of naturally mummified folk in the northern foothills of the Himalaya, or somewhere similarly unlikely, who had red hair and were clothed in woollen fabric not only in plaid designs, but also with the correct weave for such materials, if "Celtic". I am not sure of the antiquity of these people, but they were certainly older than Walter Scott's time.

The Tarim mummies. You can read the article for yourself, but it's fair to say that there is no suggestion that they were Celtic (or even a single ethnic group). Their fabric is thought, by some, to resemble similar fragments from a late Bronze Age culture of Eastern Europe.
 
Posted by Ariel (# 58) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Firenze:
How was this different, I thought, to nights at the taverna and the colourful folkloric dancing? These are not real peasants, those choristers are not engaged in singing divine service in chapel: these are contextless recreations, got up for the tourists.

A while back I was looking through tourist brochures featuring the ancient city of Petra. It was, apparently, impossible to just go to Petra without first being taken for a long, bumpy ride into the desert on a jeep to spend the evening in a Bedouin encampment, where you would sit under the stars and enjoy traditional Bedouin food, music, dancing and hospitality with all the stops pulled out, before spending the rest of the night in a tent.

Once you've checked in to your tent (depending on where in the Middle East you are, some tents are actually bungalows or villas), you get to unwind, take a hot shower in a tiled bathroom, have dinner in the restaurant, buy your drinks at the bar, enjoy the show and join in some traditional Bedouin activities.

In the morning you then queue up for your camel ride if you didn't have it the night before, and visit the souvenir shop before you leave. And as you leave, the tent would be given a quick clean and tidy up, ready for the next daily influx of new tourists that evening, all anticipating their traditional desert experience.

There might still be a market for the Lawrence of Arabic experience where you spend the night in a small, old camel-hair tent with a battered half bucket of water which has to last you, and a tin plate of boiled mutton and rice for dinner, however someone is sure to upgrade this to Authentic Experience and add a minibar, microwave etc.
 
Posted by Penny S (# 14768) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Firenze:
quote:
Originally posted by Penny S:
I have somewhere an article my sister came across in a Sunday supplement about a bunch of naturally mummified folk in the northern foothills of the Himalaya, or somewhere similarly unlikely, who had red hair and were clothed in woollen fabric not only in plaid designs, but also with the correct weave for such materials, if "Celtic". I am not sure of the antiquity of these people, but they were certainly older than Walter Scott's time.

The Tarim mummies. You can read the article for yourself, but it's fair to say that there is no suggestion that they were Celtic (or even a single ethnic group). Their fabric is thought, by some, to resemble similar fragments from a late Bronze Age culture of Eastern Europe.
Thanks for that - which I have bookmarked. I do notice the reference to Hallstatt, though. (And I did use quotes.) I suppose there could have been a small group of people who went over there for some vague reason, and died, and were buried, without ever contributing anything else to the area.

[ 13. July 2015, 18:14: Message edited by: Penny S ]
 
Posted by John Holding (# 158) on :
 
Penny -- I think tartan patterned cloth is pretty universal over many cultures and millennia.

In the case of the Scottish tartans, there is a fair degree of consensus that pretty much the current setts are of late 18th century design at best -- since all the pattern sticks were supposed to have been destroyed and the wearing of tartans forbidden after the '45. The Sobiesky brothers -- supposedly related to the wife of the Old Pretender -- "discovered" a book of "authentic tartans" which became all the rage when the Prince Regent visited Edinburgh towards the end of the century.

This is entirely separate from the ongoing industry in designing new tartans and modernizing old ones, which the Lord Lyon (if it is he who does this) continues to approve.

John
 
Posted by Albertus (# 13356) on :
 
That's it. It's not tartan per se, but the association of it with particular clans, that is the invention. I'd heard it slightly differently: the version I'd heard was that when it was announced that George IV would be visiting Edinburgh and that chiefs were invited/ expected to show up with their clansmen, there was a rush to procure suitable and distinctive dress. So Sir Hector MacHaggis of Glensporran, say, goes into the draper's shop, the draper hoicks the nearest bolt of tartan cloth off the shelf, and thenceforth it is the ancient clan tartan of the MacHaggises of Glensporran.
 
Posted by Banner Lady (# 10505) on :
 
At least the Canadian tartans are better looking than the " Cornish National Tartan": here.

Still trying to work that one out.

[ 13. July 2015, 22:18: Message edited by: Banner Lady ]
 
Posted by Banner Lady (# 10505) on :
 
As to folkloric - while there is demand, there will be supply.
I have friends who rave about the tours that they go on - and a local folkloric show is always part of the itinerary, whether it is a "Maori cultural evening" with men doing the haka and girls swinging poi for the seated tourists, or girls in grass skirts and coconut shell bras putting leis on the visitors in the Cook Islands. There is always a "traditional feast" which bears more resemblance to a Masterchef program than what the natives get to eat, and the bar will probably not be selling the local hooch.

Here in Oz, outback tours are a bit cringeworthy, but tolerated by the locals because that's what Asian and American tourists expect when they are on a tight schedule. The guides will wear stockman gear, obligingly swing the billy and make damper around a campfire and sing songs we all forgot half a century ago. Fortunately the wildlife and scenery make up for all the other rubbish.

I suspect it is the same everywhere.
 
Posted by Enoch (# 14322) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by mark_in_manchester:
... and a Northumbrian smallpipes player of some renown who, last time I saw him, sported shaved head with tattooed go-faster stripes, face full of metal work, fishnets and a leather miniskirt. That was a Thing, I think. ....

Is that the chap in the striped vest in the third row of pictures down (warning if at work, it may start playing music)
at the end of this link. His original name was Adrian Schofield, but he changed it to Inky-Adrian.

According to this news item you can not only change your own name. You can now change somebody else's.
 
Posted by lilBuddha (# 14333) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Curiosity killed ...:

Checking there are different forms of bagpipes across North Africa.

Turns out everybody invented nearly everything.

quote:
Originally posted by Piglet:
I don't think there is a line

Very broad line at the very least.
 
Posted by Penny S (# 14768) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Banner Lady:
At least the Canadian tartans are better looking than the " Cornish National Tartan": here.

Still trying to work that one out.

Well, I should think the white cross on black is St Piran's. the county flag. And the yellow to be the saffron from the buns and loaves? Would there be copper and the sea in there, as well?

My mother's school friend and her husband, on retiring, went round New Zealand, where one folkloric event was at a place concerned with the dairy industry. On came a cow, full-uddered, and the guide demonstrated old fashioned milking - three-legged stool, bucket, and hands on teats, before pulling a random grockle out of the audience. The random grockle they chose was my mother's school friend. Down she sits, head into cow's flank, hands on the teats and out flows the milk with that hissing tinny sound into the bucket. "You've done this before," says the guide, and I'm not sure whether he was pleased or not when Rae owned up. She had done it for so long that she missed out on her smallpox vaccination because she had already had cowpox.

[ 14. July 2015, 18:43: Message edited by: Penny S ]
 
Posted by Firenze (# 619) on :
 
I remember one event in Vancouver where the entertainment was Comedy Lumberjacking - as in big guys attacking logs with chainsaws while making incomprehensible backchat.
 
Posted by no prophet's flag is set so... (# 15560) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Stetson:
A somewhat more interesting usage of columns is the Canadian embassy in Washington DC. Apparently, the architect thought there was a certain amount of imperial hubris in the typical architecture of DC. Supposedly the useless, afterthought-looking columns were meant as a send-up of that.

This is indeed an architectural joke. As are a number of features of Washington DC, which seem to combine elements of 19th century longing for classical times and promotion of national desire to be recognized as great with some of the more brutalist influences of modernism.
 
Posted by Jengie jon (# 273) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Baptist Trainfan:
quote:
Originally posted by Piglet:
Good God, you can't eat haggis in August - they're not in season! [Eek!]

Surely you can start shooting them (or trapping them with pepper and nets) from the Glorious Twelfth?

Of course, they'll need to hang for a bit to get the best flavour ...

No as all on ship who have participated in a Haggis Hunt will tell you the season is 30th November to 25th January. We would not want to upset the Ghillie now would we?

Jengie
 
Posted by Baptist Trainfan (# 15128) on :
 
But the Haggis Hunt didn't happen last winter ...
 
Posted by North East Quine (# 13049) on :
 
I saw bagpipers on Sunday in Madrid. There were six groups, all in various versions of national dress, each with a banner. Each group played in turn watched by what I took to be a group of important people, then they processed into the Catedral de la Almudena. No idea what it was about.
 
Posted by mark_in_manchester (# 15978) on :
 
quote:
Is that the chap in the striped vest in the third row of pictures down (warning if at work, it may start playing music)
at the end of this link. His original name was Adrian Schofield, but he changed it to Inky-Adrian.

Yes, that's him. How did you turn that up, Enoch? He's a good player, and (it was a long time ago, but this is what I remember) had some custom pipes with a really, really deep drone on them.

So getting your head covered in tattoos is one way to get to be retired at 49...
 
Posted by Enoch (# 14322) on :
 
I've heard of him before and thought there couldn't be more than one of them.
 
Posted by The Intrepid Mrs S (# 17002) on :
 
On a trip to Sri Lanka about 14 years ago, we were surprised to discover that 'Hotel California' was apparently an ancient Sri Lankan folk tune...
 
Posted by M. (# 3291) on :
 
That's interesting, The Intrepid Mrs S, as we discovered that another ancient traditional Sri Lankan folk song is 'Daisy, Daisy'.

M.
 
Posted by la vie en rouge (# 10688) on :
 
Our trip to Vienna was booked by a travel agency, which is how we ended up at the Tourist Experience™ version of a Viennese concert. Classical music for people who don't like classical music.

Austrian musical tradition has more to offer than a pint-sized orchestra playing Strauss waltzes. Eine Kleine Nachtmusik has four movements rather than just the one, and is not the only thing Mozart wrote [Roll Eyes] (We would have gone to the opera, but 200€ a throw is a lot of money when you’re not particularly interested in the programme.)
 
Posted by Baptist Trainfan (# 15128) on :
 
Might I suggest that, if you want good quality Mozart opera at reasonable prices, try Budapest. We saw an excellent performance of Seraglio there some years ago. (We also saw a performance of a Haydn opera on a previous occasion; also good, but part of the touristic summer season at much higher prices).

The Operetta Theatre is good if you like Lehar and the like, too.

Budapest also offers its gamut of "folkloric" music and dance shows" - I don't know how good they are. We did see the genuine thing in Kecskemet a few years ago, on an open-air stage and for free - until the rain tipped down!

We also love Portuguese "fado" and enjoyed an evening here when we went to Lisbon in April. It's not everyone's cup of tea and it goes on seriously late!

[ 16. July 2015, 16:13: Message edited by: Baptist Trainfan ]
 
Posted by Margaret (# 283) on :
 
About fifteen years ago we attended a conference in South Africa and were taken to various functions, including what was billed as a Zulu tribal celebration, featuring a group of young people dressed in skimpy clothes who chanted and danced without much enthusiasm (I wondered how many of them were unemployed graduates trying to make a bit of money). At the end of the performance one young woman rather spoiled the intended effect of wild primitive natives by shouting, "Hallelujah!"
 


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